The vendor pipeline — seven stages explained

Most systems give a vendor a tick box: approved, or not. That is not how buying actually works. Somebody collects a name at an exhibition, somebody else rings them, a third person asks them to quote, and only much later does anybody check their bank account.

So a vendor here has a stage, not a flag. Seven of them.

The vendor dashboard. Nine tiles across the top reading Vendors on record 4, Working with you 0, Cleared to order from 4, Orders raised 1, Ordered 2.09L, Still owed to them 0.00, Billed by them 0.00, Paid in the last year 0.00 and Open orders 0. An amber warning reads "4 vendors with a bank account nobody has checked." Below, a card headed THE PIPELINE shows all seven stages with a count against each. — The pipeline card on the vendor dashboard. Every stage carries its own count and its own one-line meaning, so nobody has to remember what “available” was supposed to mean.

The seven stages

Stage	Means	Can you raise an order?
Pool	Collected. Nothing verified. A name and a number.	No
Available	Screened, and ready to quote.	No
Shortlisted	Under consideration for a particular job.	No
Approved	Cleared by finance. This is the gate.	Yes
Active	Working on live jobs.	Yes
Inactive	Nothing in the last year. Kept for reference.	Yes
Blocked	Do not engage, with the reason on the record.	No

Approved is the line that matters. Everything before it is research; everything from it onwards is a vendor you may commit money to. The three stages that allow an order are approved, active and inactive — and inactive is on that list deliberately, because a supplier you have not used for a year is still somebody you cleared.

Two stages move without anybody touching them

This is the part worth understanding, because it is what keeps the list honest.

Move	What triggers it
→ Active	Work happened. An order was raised, a bill arrived, or a payment went out.
→ Inactive	None of those, for however many days you set.

Nobody is asked to keep that up by hand, because nobody would. An approved list maintained by hand ends up meaning everybody we have ever cleared rather than the ones we actually work with — and those are very different lists when you are trying to find out who you depend on.

The waking-up only applies to a vendor who is approved or inactive. A blocked vendor is not woken by activity, and neither is one still being screened.

What counts as work

The date a vendor was last worth something is the latest of:

a purchase order raised against them, ignoring drafts and cancelled ones,
a bill received from them,
a payment that went out to them.

A vendor with none of those has never been worked with, so the day they were approved stands in instead. Without that, everybody approved and not yet used would go quiet on the very first sweep — which is the opposite of useful.

Moving one yourself

The buttons are on the vendor record: Active, Inactive and Block. Approving is its own action, because it is the one somebody should have to mean.

Where to go next

Next in vendors Debit notes → Give a vendor a login →

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